Fracking groups form Alliance, hire Kasich ally as Director

According to Kasich’s logic there’s no reason to slow down on the expansion of fracking since the fracking process and fracking wells are completely safe, it’s only the millions of gallons of toxic waste the process produces that’s a problem. So hey, full speed ahead!

Gas and Oil industry groups, not surprisingly, are pushing the exact same story. And they’ve formed a new group to help promote their message, hiring a Kasich ally to lead the effort.

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Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Fracking Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands

The exploding faucet may have launched the movement against fracking, but it's the unsexy compressor station that is pushing it to maturity.

Last week, more than a hundred activists from Pennsylvania and New York, includingactor Mark Ruffalo, brought thousands of gallons of drinking water to 11 families inDimock, Pa., who had been left dry after Cabot Oil and Gas stopped their water deliveries.

The mess Cabot created in 2009 from shale gas drilling had now been cleaned, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which meant no more water for the Dimock 11, the holdout families in a long-running feud over water contamination and cleanup.

At issue was the safety of well water symbolized by a jug filled with brown fluid taken from Dimock resident Scott Ely's well. Held aloft by Ruffalo, who was flanked by families and Gasland director Josh Fox, the crowd challenged officials to come and take a swig if the water was so safe. Paul Rubin, a hydrogeologist, painted a grim picture, laying out a future of continued water contamination. The Ely water had arsenic, manganese, aluminum, iron, and lead at several times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for safe drinking water.

The visuals were dramatic, and the anti-frack action ended with supporters triumphantly holding a huge water line that snaked from a tanker truck on Carter Road to a family's "water buffalo" — a large storage tank. The Dimock 11 were now supplied.

Next door pro-gas families and a Cabot industry representative held a dueling press conference calling their anti-frack neighbors liars and greedy for money. They bemoaned the besmirching of Dimock by their neighbors and outside agitators.

How the water went bad, how it was tested, when it was tested, who tested it and for what are just some of the issues confronting residents of the Marcellus Shale region and lawyers around the country suing drilling companies for alleged water contamination.

Many of these legal cases have lagged on for years, leaving residents dependent on bottled drinking water and "good neighbor" gestures by drilling companies that deny blame but temporarily supply water, until they decide to stop as Cabot did in Dimock.

Missing from this debate is what many environmentalists see as an equally important issue in shale gas exploration: the air quality.

An invisible product of the huge industrialization of the Marcellus Shale region is the air pollution created not just from thousands of transport trucks used in well construction and fracking, but the added infrastructure required to bring gas to market, most significantly the compressor stations.

These stations are essential to push gas through the pipelines. They can be loud; they emit methane, and BTEX compounds, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. They have been associated with significant headaches, bloody noses, skin lesions, blisters, and rashes. They operate continuously and permanently.

"Compressor stations are not just accessories to gas production facilities — they are large-scale industrial installations. In some parts of the West, compressor engines contribute an average of nearly 60 percent of all nitrogen oxide emissions from oil and gas operations," said Nadia Steinzor, the Marcellus Shale Regional Organizer for Earthworks.

The same day activists staged the water mercy mission to Dimock, a remarkable but largely unnoticed event occurred a few miles north, in Montrose.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153417/air_too_dangerous_to_breathe_how_fracking_can_turn_rural_communities_into_industrial_wastelands_with_photos

Ohio lawmakers should impose fracking moratorium until impact on ground water can be determined

Last week, many news agencies reported on the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency'sconclusion that contamination of water wells around the town of Pavillion, Wyo., was the result of natural gas drilling. The contaminants recovered from the aquifer included an assortment of carbon-based compounds, among them the carcinogens benzene, phenol and 2-butoxyethanol. These and hundreds of other chemicals are known to be used where gas extraction is accomplished using horizontal drilling and hydraulical fracturing -- the two procedures commonly and simply referred to as "fracking."

Fracking had been done extensively in the Pavillion area for more than a decade, and, indeed, local residents had been complaining of smelly, oddly-colored water for about as long. They are not alone. According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy group Common Cause, at least 1,000 complaints of water contamination connected to fracking have been reported across the country from the Rocky Mountains to our neighbors in Pennsylvania (most famously around the town of Dimock). The industry continues to reject concerns and fight allegations with a substantial public relations campaign and lobbying effort estimated to have cost the industry $747 million over the past 10 years, with over $20 million of that going to current members of Congress from both parties. Their expenditures have paid off . . . for the gas industry. With tens of thousands of wells across the country, the industry has been exempt from much regulation, including parts of the Clean Water Act, and to date no independent and comprehensive study of the safety of fracking has been conducted.

Meanwhile in Ohio, as gas lease brokers -- with the lure of fast, easy money -- descend on rural areas across the state, two bills that advocate precaution are stalled in the Ohio state legislature.House bill 345 and Senate bill 213 are easy to understand: Pause natural gas extraction by fracking in the state until the U.S. EPA concludes a study -- the first of its kind -- on the safety of fracking with regard to water resources. (This study is expected to be done by 2014). Then require the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to alter Ohio's regulation and oversight of fracking to address the safety concerns identified by the EPA's research.

Simple and common sense, right? It's like making sure your kid knows how to drive before handing him the keys. I'm not sure our state politicians think that protecting the state's water resources is of particular importance, requiring urgent passage of these bills. Instead, I've heard grumblings by many proponents of the moratorium that the bills will be killed in committee.

To contrast, let's look to Nebraska, where, over the course of weeks, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, with a unanimous bipartisan vote from the legislature, took control of the proposed TransCanada tar sands oil pipeline (the Keystone XL pipeline), re-routing its Nebraska pathway to avoid the Ogallala aquifer -- a major source of water for that and surrounding states. While admittedly I'm no fan of the XL pipeline, I applaud the Nebraska state government for its recognition of the importance of ground water to the residents of that state and its quick action to protect it.

No one likes to believe that their representatives in government, especially state government, would hold moneyed interests above those of ordinary constituents. That's why I am ignoring thereport and accompanying impressive spreadsheet called "Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets," published last month by Common Cause, showing Ohio leaders and committees received over $2.8 million in gas industry money over the past 10 years. At the top of the list of state-level recipients were Gov. John Kasich ($213,519), the Republican Senate Campaign Committee ($114,750) and the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee ($95,500). (To be fair, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was No. 4).

Instead, I'm going to urge lawmakers to apply common-sense precaution and pass the bills to impose a moratorium on fracking until we know how it can be done safely. Other states have done it -- New York, Maryland, even New Jersey. Utilizing domestic, even local, energy resources should be a priority for the country and the state. But it's foolish -- even unpatriotic -- to destroy our drinking water in the pursuit of a buck. And with this last sentence, I'm talking to everyone from federal and state politicians to my neighbors signing gas leases.

Steven Corso Chardon

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2011/12/ohio_lawmakers_should_impose_f.html

Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields

ProPublica examined government environmental reports and private lawsuits and interviewed scores of residents, physicians and toxicologists in four states—Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania—that are drilling hot spots. Our review showed that cases like Wallace-Babb's go back a decade in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, where drilling has taken place for years. They are just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale drilling boom began in earnest in 2008.

Concern about such health complaints is longstanding—Congress held hearings on them in 2007 at which Wallace-Babb testified. But the extent and cause of the problems remains unknown. Neither states nor the federal government have systematically tracked reports from people like Wallace-Babb, or comprehensively investigated how drilling affects human health.

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Fracking opponents seek moratorium in Ohio

Democratic state Sen. Michael Skindell of suburban Cleveland introduced a bill Tuesday calling for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to await results of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study of potential environmental hazards.

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France Vote Outlaws ‘Fracking’ Shale for Natural Gas, Oil Extraction

“We are at the end of a legislative marathon that stirred emotion from lawmakers and the public,” French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said late yesterday before the vote. Hydraulic fracturing will be illegal and parliament would have to vote for a new law to allow research using the technique, she said.

Energy companies that plan to use fracking to produce oil and gas in France will have their permits revoked and its use could lead to fines and prison, according to the law passed by a vote of 176 in favor, 151 against by the senators in Paris.

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Duke study finds “systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale gas extraction”

As shale gas has emerged as potentially significant source of fuel for this country, it has come under increased scrutiny.  A NY Times series raised concerns about pollution of surface waters by the wastewater produced during drilling of natural gas wells using hydraulic fracturing.  A recent study by Cornell University researchers called into question the conventional wisdom that gas is far better than coal in terms of its carbon pollution, in part because of concerns of methane leakage during and after fracking.

Now comes a new paper by Duke University researchers that documents “systematic evidence for methane contamination” of household drinking water wells by shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania and New York.

The study, which the authors said was the first scientific examination of water contamination near shale gas drilling operations, found that water supplies within one kilometer of drilling sites were contaminated by methane at 17 times the rate of those water wells farther from gas developments.

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